News from Afghanistan

The L.A. Times has a fascinating article about all sorts of things (including classified material!) that's somehow getting off of the main base in Bagram Air Field and into the local markets.

When I was there I did occasionally see some 'small' military items in the local towns for sale like cots, old boots or uniforms, etc. I think for the most part those came from U.S. soldiers who felt bad for how poor these people were or wanted to thank them for all the work they did for us and gave them their old stuff.

The article, however, talks about computer equipment and memory drives loaded with classified information.

That's just sloppy.

Now, as far as I know, there isn't much in the way of environmental laws in Afghanistan so we could throw away just about anything and nobody cared. Most stuff was burned (I remember the terrible smell when the wind blew the wrong way and seeing small explosions when the fire got to chemicals or other volatile substances). I can only guess that computers are thrown on the trash heap as well.

When I was there, I have to admit I was shocked by the number of security violations I saw there. Some are understandable (it was, and is, a war zone after all) but there was a bit of a 'wild west' attitude towards sensitive information and a lot of people cut corners because they thought it was just too inconvenient to do things the proper way.

For example, anything with classified information on it (note pads, flash drives, etc.) is required to be secured in specific ways. It should be locked up, not available for just anyone to access, etc. etc. Many however carried around classified information, left it around at their work place or their tent, and generally made it pretty easy to steal if you were interested. Part of the reason for a rather cavalier attitude about classified information was that the system was out of control and too many things were classified. I've always believed that if you say everything is sensitive and needs special care then nothing will get special care.

That being said, I still don't understand how they're smuggling stuff off base. Parts of a laptop would require that time be taken to dismantle it and I'm not sure how that could happen. All Afghans on post (at least when I was there) required a military escort who was supposed to keep the Afghans under watch. Seeing some local digging around at the innards of a laptop should raise some concerns. Larger items are easier to find since locals get searched when leaving post. It could very well be an 'inside job' but I find it hard to believe soldiers are doing it for money. The pay is pretty good and I can't imagine there's much return on junk. Now I could imagine soldiers doing it for drugs, booze or other items they can't get on base.

I do remember a one or two occasions when locals were working on post and found classified information (it was old and irrelevant but still marked as classified). To their credit the Afghans brought it to the attention of their escorts immediately. I went to meet them and thank them personally and recommended that we give them some sort of reward (even $10 would have been huge to these people) but since that wasn't my area of responsibility I'm not sure if that ever happened.

The article also mentions that Pakistan isn't the steadfast of allies in our War on Terrorism but that's certainly not a secret (except, apparently, to George W. Bush).

Overall this article will hopefully be a wake up call to those in Bagram now. It's absolutely inexcusable that classified information like this (plus personal information of soldiers which isn't classified but not something you want floating around in any case).

Wow....more on this here.